As Imperceptibly as Grief
by Kyuketsuki1
Summary: Shounen ai. AU. When Heero returns to his childhood home he has to come to terms with more than he expected...


As Imperceptibly as Grief

By: Kyuketsuki

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing and am making no profit from this work.

~~*~~

Maybe I should care. Maybe there should be a part of me that regrets what's happening. Maybe I left that behind when she called me. She called me. An old friend I haven't seen in years phoned me up early in the morning to tell me that my father is dying. And so I left. I grabbed my bag, glanced at the boy still sleeping in our bed and left, scribbling a note and leaving it on the table where he is bound to find it along with the newspaper. I could always call him from the hospital, after all. I haven't yet, but maybe I will. Maybe. I should, he'll be worried.

Maybe?

What happened to all the determination in my life? I was a stubborn child and an even more stubborn adult. So where did that sense of resolve go? Yes or no; black or white, no shades to break up that fierceness. I think it must have left as soon as I stepped out of our apartment and back into the memories.

I don't want to talk to him. He'll be worried, caring, and considerate and then I'll feel bad for not loving him. I should, there's no reason not to. I remember us after a year of half-hearted dating. He decided that his apartment was too small, and mine was in a bad neighborhood. So we went hunting for a trendy little loft on the cafe littered streets of chic East Street. He carefully inspected each building, questioned each landlord while I stood outside smoking and trying to understand.

Meanwhile my father was being eaten away by the cancer in his bloodstream.

_We've known about the cancer for some time. Unfortunately, it has metastasized. There's nothing we can do now except wait for the inevitable._

It was no surprise. The man had smoked most of his life. They had diagnosed the cancer just over a year ago. He had refused all treatment. It was so very much like my father to go out like that. It was the same kind of mutiny that he had forbidden in our house, but you can't stop a rebellion that comes from so much inhaled tar that you're lucky you can suck in a square inch of oxygen.

Relena kept a silent vigil by his bed. That was more confusing than the dying man. He had never been particularly kind to her. He had accepted her as one of my friends, maybe hoped that she was something more. They both did. But after a while, maybe after I left, they must have realized. Relena could never be anything but a sister to me.

Maybe I'll call him, tell him to come down here. I don't need him, but I might as well make him think I do. I know he feels awkward when I distance myself from him. Some part of him wants to know he's necessary. Maybe there's part of me that feels bad for not needing him. That's why we moved in together; that's why I still take him out every other weekend; that's why I pretend to care and he pretends not to notice that I don't.

I wonder as I dial the number if he's at home. Maybe he went to the fresh market, or Parisian. It would make sense, he tends to go shopping when he's bored, always returning with at least one bag of overpriced clothes or a new set of Egyptian Cotton sheets that he paid way too much for, but he would never know or care. As long as he can stack those clean starched sheets in the linen closet with all the others; every color of the rainbow he decides he wants to sleep on.

"Hello?"

"Hi Quatre."

~~*~~

I can't stop the flood of memories as I wander the town. Relena and I waiting for the bus at that corner; TP-ing that house on Halloween; walking to the library down that path. But there is a shadow in those images, a blank place where someone should have been. Where someone was once.

This place was always a hell. The suburbs of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania were an inescapable jail. It used to be chic to hate where you lived. That was when we were all teenagers, and we were testing a new set of rules. Those times were fun, as long as I didn't have to face my family. I was happy with my friends. I was only happy with my friends.

Content even when we were drunk off our asses, trying to escape reality. Or maybe it was time we were running from then. Me and Trowa and him. Relena wasn't invited, she would have tried to talk us out of it. That couldn't happen. We wanted to drink till our vision blurred and we could forget that this was our last year before high school ended and we all had to leave. Trowa was joining the Air Force like he was expected to, he had to hold up the family lineage. I was going away to college. NYU, with their city-toughened attitude and amazing Anthropology department, even though I wasn't taking anything along those lines.

And him? Where was he going? He had joked that he would die in this town. We had laughed that stupid drunken laughter. It was a horrible future, and we had laughed at the sadness of it all. It wasn't until later that I realized the pain in those eyes. He was probably right.

I wandered to the other side of town without even realizing it. He had lived around here. Some nondescript apartment complex while the rest of us lived in the lush old houses on the northern side of this hellish place. He never wanted us to know. Not that we would have cared. He was always eager to go over to one of our houses instead of us going to his. I was probably the only one of us who had ever set foot in that place.

I had talked him into staying the night. He had smiled and nodded, then realized he didn't have his stuff. So we came here to collect it. He had wanted me to wait outside, but I told him I wanted to see his room and so he had let me up.

It was dark. Even for nine at night it was dark. The glow of the television lit up the living room. A woman was collapsed on the sofa, bottle of some liquor overturned on the floor.

He was mortified. He had hurried me into his bedroom and shut the door. He didn't go check on her, he just shoved clothes into his book bag with a little too much force while I admired his room.

Posters, there were lots of posters. Movies and bands so long forgotten even the images of those banners are faded in my mind. Everything was pristine, as if by keeping it perfect he could forget about the rest of the apartment. His bed was neatly made, his pillows and mattress clad in white sheets so worn they were gray. They were clean, but they were gray. I wonder if he resented it. If he hated the clothes he wore because they weren't from the high priced stores that we all shopped at. If he hated his mother for being passed out on the sofa. If he wished all these things away as he fell asleep at night on his gray sheets.

But none of it mattered to me. None of it mattered because he was crying. He was sitting on the clean carpet of his bedroom and sobbing into his hands that I shouldn't be there.

My God, he was crying, wasn't he?

~~*~~

Now I sit in the waiting room of this horrid hospital and rub my eyes. Relena is beside me, nursing a cup of coffee so full of cream it's nearly white. She probably hates even that. Relena could never stand coffee, she thought it was too bitter. She didn't even like the expensive expresso ice cream we had gotten when the cafe downtown had started serving it.

Quatre should be here any minute. I didn't meet him at the airport and he didn't expect me to. He would never want to inconvenience me. I hate him for it. I hate him because of everything he isn't, because of everything he could never be, because of who he could never be. Quatre, who doesn't drink or smoke. Who sends all his clothes out to the cleaner's every other week like clockwork. Who drinks tea with just a hint of sugar and loves fruit of almost every kind. Who uses baby shampoo in his fine hair so it won't go limp as soon as he steps out of the apartment.

I shouldn't hate him because of those things, but I do.

A nurse walks out of my father's room, glancing at me with disapproving eyes as if she knew I didn't love him either. But she doesn't know who I am; what I went through as a child. Who is she to pass judgments? Who am I to do the same? To hate him because he sleeps on sheets of every imaginable color when I would be happy with gray. I would kill for gray.

Relena is looking at me now. "Are you okay, Heero? You look a little pale."

I don't even bother to force a smile like I once would have. "I'm fine."

"What's bothering you, Heero?" She takes another sip of her tepid coffee, as if the answer doesn't matter.

"Just being back here. I didn't expect it to be so much like it was."

Relena nods. "I know what you mean. This place is full of ghosts."

I carefully look her over for the first time since my arrival. Her hair is the same wheat blonde as always, clipped back behind her in an almost half hearted attempt to get it out of her face. She is clad in her customary pink, this time a thick sweater to fight off the autumn chill and a long pleated white skirt that for some reason goes with the shirt.

"One in particular," I mumble and rub my eyes again. They hurt a little more than they should. I know the usual pain of long hours without sleep. This isn't one of them.

Relena lowers her paper cup and looks over at me. She opens her mouth to say something, then closes it and gazes at the door again. She doesn't want to mention him. Or maybe she doesn't remember either. Maybe he managed to allude all of us in some bizarre fluke of memory. Maybe he left this place, never to be recalled in the town that caused him so much pain.

"Did you ever hear from Trowa," she asks, skillfully avoiding the subject at hand.

I shake my head no. We were never that close of friends, no matter how much time we spent together. He used to say that we were both too reserved to really bond. He was right. I never bonded with anyone but him.

Look what good it did me.

Now I'm in a town I had long put in my past, waiting for the lover I hate to arrive so that my father can die. And I don't care one way or another if either ever happens. I just want to forget.

~~*~~

Still shielding my eyes from the bright glare of this hospital hallway, I don't see Quatre approaching; don't even know he's there until he puts his hands on my shoulders.

"Are you okay?" He looks so compassionate as he gazes down at me, platinum blonde hair alight in the brash radiance of this place.

I shift away from him slightly, even though I hate myself for it. "I'm fine." I get up and glance over at Relena, who is smiling at him weakly. "Relena, would you mind driving Quatre to the house? He needs to drop off his stuff."

She nods. "Hi. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"The pleasure is all mine, Relena." He looks over at me, but I pretend not to notice.

"I guess you two will be staying at his father's." She smiles. "It not that far from here. Nothing in Siddonsburg is really that far from anything else." They share comfortable laughter as they walk away, back out to the parking lot, back out to the car, back on the road, back to him where I should be.

But no, they aren't, are they?

I wander into his room. He's asleep, like when I arrived. Not that he would pay me much heed even if he wasn't. He was always so disappointed in me, in the life that I chose. He wanted me to stay in this place and raise a family. He didn't care that this town was dying, that all the young people moved away to Harrisburg to get jobs in the factories or farther, to college and real careers. The ones who stay do nothing with themselves. Maybe a few return. Maybe they come back after getting degrees to work in the hospital, or the schools where they can educate people so much like themselves.

This place is dead.

Maybe after he goes my last ties here can be finally severed. I could escape the memories once and for all. Cities can wash away the past like no where else on earth. They flood the senses until nothing but the moment exists. That's how I want to live. I don't want to think about the sheets in the closet of our chic loft on East Street; the way I could never bond with Trowa even at the best of times; the predictability of Relena's clean pink sweater and long white pleated skirt; the way his sobs racked his body as he wept for me to leave; the way my father couldn't breathe without a machine.

And so I stand at the foot of a cold hospital bed, watching my father's aided life force slowly drip away.

Maybe, if I could muster up the courage to deal with it all, everything would be better. If I could tell Quatre that I couldn't love him no matter how hard I tried, that I didn't need Relena's protective glances, that I never forgave my father for not mourning over my mother that night, that I didn't care about the woman passed out on the sofa or the cheap apartment but the person who lived inside a clean fortress of posters and gray sheets; if I could say all those things, would that heal the wounds?

For the first time in eternity I feel like crying. But I won't. I can't. Because I don't have any reason to. Not the kind of reason that he did. The father I never respected or loved is dying. So what? His mother was passed out for probably the millionth time in his life. And worst of all, I was there to see it. To witness his embarrassment and horrible home life. As if I cared about what neighborhood he lived in, or the cost of the whiskey his mother had drunk that night until she swam in oblivion. I didn't care. All that ever mattered was that he was on the floor crying his eyes out.

I rub my eyes once again as I snap out of the steady rhythm of the oxygen machine keeping him alive. It's dark outside, even though in here it's lit. I can almost feel the darkness. It's that deep near winter night, the dark that seems endless, like it might never rise. And just when you think it's much too dark for anything but dawn to come, it gets just a bit darker.

Like when we had snuck into my attic to go through the boxes and get away from the world. It was late, and Relena and Trowa had gone home. Catherine had come to collect her brother and Relena had been picked up by her butler. But he had stayed. I had asked him to and he had stayed, like so many other nights.

We had climbed up that unsteady looking pull-down ladder and sat in the utter darkness of the attic until I got my wits enough to light the candle we had brought with us. There were no lights up there, I had told him as we dug through I box of some long ago memorabilia, laughing at everything and nothing.

We stumbled on some yearbooks from years long past. He gushed over how cute I was and I playfully hit him. We sat close together on that dusty wooden floor, yearbook splayed over our legs and tried to remember times that were really happy. And I think we must have fallen asleep there, because I remember the way the hazy light of dawn looked across his features. And I think I must have been happy then, because we were together, and he had been smiling, and nothing existed except us and a few ancient books of photographs and the scribbled signatures of children who have all moved on.

~~*~~

I was wrong. Some of the things in this place have changed. Some of the stores have left, some have come. The Livery is still here, which is relieving only because that's where I was heading. I want to know if they still serve the soup I used to crave as a child.

The decor has changed a bit, and the high school girls who always waited tables have been replaced by a new generation, but it still has the same smell of home cooked food wafting from the kitchen.

I forget sometimes that I've only been gone a few years. That's hardly a lifetime, even though it once was.

Two of the waitresses are talking near the kitchen, and one of them catches sight of me as I come in. She waves for me to sit wherever I want, says one last thing to her friend, then wanders over, tugging on her skirt and setting it at a not so dangerous height on her thighs. She smiles winningly through her lip gloss and blinks her painted eyes at me. 

"What do you want to drink," she asks, handing me a worn menu.

"Coffee."

She nods and scribbles it down on the pad of paper in her too-lotioned hands. "Decaf?"

"No." 

The girl smiles at me as if considering my rebel appeal. I wonder what she would say if she knew I preferred people with a higher testosterone level. But she doesn't know, and begins to wander away, then stops.

"Are you new here?" I glance at her nametag which declares her a "Valerie" of God knows what heritage.

"No."

"Oh." She smiles. "So you're a native?"

I nod. If you aren't new then you were born here, because as far as everyone is concerned, no one would dare to visit this place.

"Wouldn't think it. You've got an urban air about you." I actually look at her now. She has small green eyes that she must consider her best feature, because she accentuates them as much as possible. Her naturally dark hair is cut into a short bob that is probably the hottest item in this ancient place. She smiles wistfully and returns to her friend, who has been watching the proceeding with a close eye.

They still have the soup and when I order it she grins again. "It's really not that good; too thin. Get the chili. We've got great chili."

And all I can do in retaliation is stare up at her as she writes down the order I didn't ask for and wanders away to retrieve it. A moment later she returns with a bowl of chili. I stare down at the stuff for a moment. Maybe there was a purpose to it. Maybe there was a reason she had brought me chili instead of the soup that I wanted. But if there was, I didn't see it.

I drop a ten on the sticky table and leave.

The street is cold. It's September and soon enough snow will be falling here. It was always so cold here growing up, though now I realize that the city is colder. I used to slip into my two hundred dollar coat and wait patiently for Relena to do the same once arriving at her house. Everyone walked to school, and some days I would go out of my way to walk with him, leaving twenty minutes early so I could surprise him when he emerged from his apartment building. He was always so happy to see me, even when it was obvious he was miserable. It had been one of those miserable days that I finally broke down.

~~*~~

I had been waiting outside for nearly five minutes when he emerged though the battered door, struggling with his book bag. I snagged it, pulling it off of his shoulders and throwing it over my own.

"Heero!" He grinned at me. "What are you doing here?"

I steered him from the path and into the surrounding woods.

"What are you doing?"

"We're not going to school."

He stopped, grabbing the sides of my coat. "We're not?"

I smiled at him. "No."

He nodded. "Yes we are. You have a test in AP chemistry." He hooked an arm around my shoulder and guided me back to the path. I swung him around to face me.

"No, we're not." I leaned forward until my face was inches from his. "We're going back to my house in," I glanced at my watch then, "ten minutes and staying all day. We can leave now and miss my father."

He took his bag skillfully from me, sliding it over his shoulders. "Relena's been worrying over the test for a week now, which means it's important." He grabbed my arm and tried to pull me once again onto the trail.

I wrapped said arm around his shoulders, pulling him into a loose embrace which I think must have been a bit more than just friendly. "Duo..."

"I know you know that stuff backwards and forwards but you really should go to school. You know, they say the most looked at think by employers is--"

"Duo." I pulled him closer so that our chests were pressed together. "Come on." He just sighed and let himself be led off of the worn path, my arm still encircling him.

He leaned hastily into me, knocking me off balance. "You just remember that it was my idea to go to school."

I nodded and slid my arm into place once again. I was willing to state my reasoning as to the cold, but he didn't say anything, just kept walking at the same leisurely pace that always fascinated me. Watching Duo Maxwell walk was like a religious experience, and though I probably never would have admitted it to him then, he was the closest thing to divinity I had ever known.

~~*~~

My house resembled the old plantation houses of the Garden District. They were more like mansions and so was the monumental brick fortress in which I lived. It was an ancient place once the height of technology and now a burden despite the new electricity, water, and insulation. During the winter it was cold even with the numerous fire places that always seemed alight with a cozy pyre. And while the rest of the house was decorated in stylish and rich fabrics, my room seemed a world unto itself, save the massive dark wood canopy bed I protested for its decadence.

Duo loved it. Duo fawned over my house relentlessly, constantly running slender fingers over the fine embroidery that my father kept up only so he wouldn't have to change anything. He thought I didn't notice the appreciative glances and touches, but I did. I noticed every slight gesture, every rushed breath, every blush that claimed his pale skin. My house fit him and his black clothes and delicate features and worn cross.

He flung himself down on my bed, arms out, legs almost obscenely spread.

Something about him was almost frightening. He had too much grace for a boy his age, too much beauty, and I was constantly overwhelmed by him. It seemed like everything dulled in his presence, and I could see it in others, as well, not just me. It was visible in the way everyone was drawn to him the moment he entered a room. And for the life of him, he honestly didn't see it.

I think it must have been Christmas, because when we wandered down the stairs the parlor was alight with multicolor strands wrapped around a massive tree. It was dark from the thick clouds that blotted the sun, and the room was dimly lit by just the tree and the meager illumination that managed to push through the windows.

Duo smiled happily and sat down on the sofa to admire the scene. He folded his hands in his lap and leaned toward the tree like a child in the grip of anticipation.

He loved Christmas.

I sat beside him--perhaps a bit too close--so that mere inched separated us. But through the thick clothes we wore it seemed like an eternity between our bodies. I sat beside him and contemplated the box in my pocket.

Duo sighed contentedly, but behind the smile on his lips, something danced. I could see it when I looked him in the eyes. There was a nagging pain there that I would have given anything to dispel.

He turned to look at me. "Do you remember when we had to write those letters to Santa Claus in school?"

The question made me pause. "Yes."

"I used to ask for the stupidest things." He looked wistful, but the moment was fleeting. "I used to ask for my mother to get better, and for the power to be on when I got home so it would be warm. I asked for mom to be awake enough to make dinner like on the TV." He frowned. "I asked for stupid stuff and the teacher read it. She sent a letter to my mom. Did you know that?"

Duo.

"Yup. She sent a letter to my mom about it. Guess what I got that Christmas. I'd give you a hint, but you're smart enough to figure it out."

"Duo..."

He shook his head. "Sorry. I didn't mean to get all cynical on ya there."

"Here." I shoved the box into his hands. For one blinding moment he looked horrified. "I... I just saw it and thought of you. You don't have to... Don't..."

He just stared down at the box, eyes wavering.

"Don't get me anything, Duo. I don't need anything. I've... I've got everything I need, I mean . . ."

Duo wiped viciously at his eyes with his sleeve. "Heero, you shouldn't have. I can't--"

He didn't keep going. He couldn't. I pulled him into a fierce hug, crushing him to me desperately. And Duo just pressed his forehead to my neck and tried not to cry even though I think I must have been. Maybe he was repaying the favor. It seemed like I was the one to lick the wounds, but I wasn't. I would only ever do that for him. Only for Duo.

I pulled him closer and let every barrier shatter. I hadn't cried in years. Hadn't since my mother had died three years ago. And so I sat on the sofa with Duo Maxwell clutched desperately to me. I wept for him and for me in the soft multi-colored illumination of the Christmas tree. I cried and breathed him in and rejoiced for the feeling of his arms around me. I sobbed, letting his presence intoxicate me until I didn't even realize the feeling of his fingers on my neck, my cheeks, and finally his lips so gently on mine.

~~*~~

I have written all these things down as if I know them to be truth, as if I want them forever remembered by the reader, who shall stumble upon this leather-bound journal perhaps how I stumbled upon it. Maybe in an antique store it will be sitting, and read by the patron and they will think it to be unforgiving truth. But in these accounts I have lied more times than I care to think about.

I admit this now for the sake of the reader. I never kissed Duo. Not once in my long years with him was I graced with the feel of those lips on mine. And yet I wrote it all down as if cold, hard fact and placed it before an audience for them to read and accept.

I never kissed Duo. I won't mar him by saying I did. The last entry was not correct. I know that because I can look back on the words and not feel the need to relive them.

That was all I could think about today. Writing the wrong I put down in black ink as the truth. I thought it as we sat in the waiting room. I thought it as the doctors came out to tell me that my father was finally on his deathbed. I thought it as they told me that it shouldn't be more than a few hours before he's dead completely. And I thought it as Quatre tried to sooth the tears that would not come and as Relena talked quietly to the doctor as if he could do anything to change that truth.

For my father's death was truth. I know that because they just wheeled him out of his room in the ICU and down to the morgue.

Relena cried softly, Quatre wrapped an arm around her shoulders and I stood watching as he was lifted off of the bed and onto a cold metal table. They didn't want me to be there, but I didn't leave.

There's something final about watching a once-living thing. It's as if he stayed in that bed we all would have thought him alive. But he didn't stay. Three orderlies came and put him on a stainless steel, wheeled table and covered him with a sheet and then moved him to the elevator and down to the basement.

And that's why I'm sitting in the office of this dreary funeral home and listening to a droll man tell me how the expenses were all taken care of.

I can believe it. My father wouldn't have wanted a big funeral, and as I glance him laying in the coffin I know it. It's a pine box, like they would have buried a soldier in. He's wearing a black suit that he hated in life but evidently doesn't mind now that he's dead. And he looks peaceful for once. But I expect him to get up at any moment and look at me. I can imagine him waking up to tell me not to touch the house or to leave or to finally get some backbone and quit tiptoeing around in New York.

All these things I can see his corpse saying to me. But it doesn't. It lays peacefully in that pine box as if it either doesn't know I'm here or doesn't care. It can't be my father. My father couldn't die, he was too strong, too mean. People like that don't die, despite what biology and time seems to say. He's not dead. It looks like him in that cheap coffin but it isn't. Mt father can't die.

I notice when arms wrap around my waist, but I don't react right away. Looking down at the intruding limbs, I notice the lean musculature and tan skin. It takes me a while to register that it is neither Quatre nor Relena, and even then I don't do anything. Not until a soft voice whispers my name.

"Heero."

I spin around and there he stands. Duo stands guiltily before me now, a light blush spread across his cheeks. He studies the floor, one hand reaching up to rest on the back of his neck.

"Sorry, I guess you don't remember me." He forces a smile then, but it isn't like the smiles I recall. "It's Duo. Duo Maxwell."

"I know," I same lamely, sounding for all the world like a lie.

"Oh," the hand returns to rub his neck nervously. "Well..."

I know he expected a warm welcome, and I desperately want to give him one, but he's different. Or perhaps not different enough. He's taller, and his skin is less pale, and his hair is darker than I remember. But he has the same blue-violet eyes and the same braid. For an instant two images flash before me and overlap. One of youth and one of adulthood all encompassed in this beautiful figure standing in the viewing room of a funeral parlor.

"I heard about your dad. I..." He looks at everything but me now. "I didn't mean to interrupt you, really. I just--"

"Are you coming," I ask, interrupting him.

"What?"

I am tempted to take a step back but then I would be closer to my false father. "To the funeral. Are you coming?"

He looks scared this time. Really scared, like when it finally registered that I was leaving and he was staying in this dead-end town. "I...I didn't think I was invited."

"I didn't know you were here. I had hoped that," it's my turn to look embarrassed now. "If I had known I would have found you."

"What?"

"When I came into town. I would have found you. But I didn't."

"No," he said, a bit dazed. "You didn't."

I blush. "So are you coming?"

He finally meets my gaze and I want to die. His violet eyes are so sympathetic, so caring. That look shouldn't be directed at me. It wasn't meant for a long ago friend who didn't even have the nerve to look him up when they came into town and who didn't love the father laying dead in his coffin.

"Sure. If you want me to."

"I want you to," I say, ripping my eyes away again. I can't look at him. I can't be on the receiving end of one of those gazes. It hurts too much.

~~*~~

People might argue that life is a cycle, but I know that it is not. Life is nothing but a relatively long line dotted with events that are inconsequential in the long run.

A man can contemplate suicide today, perhaps even lift the razor blade, but it doesn't matter in the big picture. Death is the finish of everything. What do the means matter if the ends are the same?

So why do I feel like shit if all this has no purpose?

I did not love my father, but my stomach is still in knots as I try to escape from the people who are here to give their condolences. They have no more right to be here than I do, but still they file reverently into the dimly lit viewing room to pay false respects to a corpse that will not thank them for it.

Contemplating death as I do, I have never really considered it an option. I have never sat down with a bottle at the kitchen table, lining the pills up in a precise row of white capsules as I have heard of people doing. I cannot picture myself doing this as I can other things. I can see myself gently kissing Quatre each night before bed; calling home from work to see if I should pick something up for dinner; gazing into the mirror and wondering where my life went; sitting in the hospital waiting room; standing in the funeral parlor, graciously accepting humble condolences from people I don't remember once they have walked away.

I can't see myself trying to escape the pains of life, but I want to. I want to because I need to know what death really is. I want the answers to the questions that have plagued me since my mother's "untimely demise".

When does childhood end and adulthood begin?

I am twenty-something years old and could die tomorrow. Is it the date of death that determines such things? If you die at sixteen then were you an adult a moment before you were struck down? Or perhaps only when realization hits of your death are you truly grown; for it is then that you have experienced everything that you are going to, save the end, which could not possibly happen to a child.

Could it?

I've often wondered how others' deaths might have changed history. Insignificant people like my third grade teacher or the man who seemed to be permanently huddled outside the building in which I work.

Would my life be any different for the lack of them? Would I have been traumatized by the strict teacher who replaced Miss Lundy? Would the tattered man at some point in my many meetings with him somehow change my perception so greatly? Would I have ever left this dying town if Duo had pulled me onto his gray sheets that night?

Quatre wandered worriedly over, pristine black suit making him excruciatingly pale. He looks fragile but his skin is flushed a healthy pink like a meticulously polished glow. The look on his face in unmistakable; he pities me and is ashamed for it.

I pretend not to notice, preferring to watch the door for Duo, who walks almost nervously in a moment later, raven haired man close on his heels. He is dressed in his customary black, perhaps a bit more soberly. A starched dress shirt over matching pants and a pair of leather boots. His companion is wearing much the same thing, but he looks odd, as if he would never consider such a wardrobe for anything but a funeral.

I immediately despise him.

Duo smiles winningly at me from the door, but there is force behind it that is disconcerting. He nods to the black headed boy, who drifts inconspicuously into a corner, casting one last glance to Duo and then me, meeting my eyes with a look that I do not recognize for a moment.

Jealousy.

I am tempted to grab his hand and drag him back away from the guests, all of which must recognize him. I don't. I won't dare touch him; I'm too afraid of what I might do. The mere sight of him sends the world spinning lazily beneath my feet so that I feel like I might be pulled from gravity any moment.

He stands close, eyes downcast. "I'm really sorry about your dad, Heero." He glances over to the casket then quickly away. "If I had known that you were in town--" he stops, as if considering the inappropriateness of the comment. "I would have dropped by sooner."

He doesn't want it to look like my father's death was a convenient way to see me again. I wonder when all these people started mattering so much to him. But even as I scan the crowd I can see it. They are all looking at us, as if expecting something to happen at any moment.

"What have you been up to," he says after a minute, almost nervous to be asking such a thing here.

"Come over for dinner?"

Once again I have thrown him for a loop and he is forced to meet my gaze, which has been studying the top of his head contentedly since he walked up.

"What?"

"After the viewing. Quatre--" I realize that he does not know this relatively recent addition to my life. "He's cooking dinner. I..." I lick my suddenly dry lips. "I want you to come over."

He looks to the man in the corner, who refuses to meet his gaze.

"Well, I," this time his eyes fall on the buttons of my shirt. "Sure."

I nod stupidly; wanting to touch him, to hear every story he can tell, to recount my own miserable years, to just watch him until nothing exists but those blue-violet eyes. I want desperately.

~~*~~

I sit in my old room, staring at the wall and waiting. I can smell the evidence of Quatre's cooking wafting from downstairs, hear the slow progress of traffic on the street, feel the cold seeping in from the cracked window, but I can't see. My vision has been assaulted with too many images in the last two days. The only time when my thoughts are clear anymore is in my sleep, but even that has been alluding me.

I can remember lots of sleepless nights in this place when I was younger. I would stay up thinking about the tragedies. Life is nothing but a sequence of tragedies. What else could effect someone so much as to really change them?

My life is one giant tragedy.

I wonder if his was too. I wonder if I can ask him that and not have to explain what I mean. I wonder if I can look him in the eye and not hate myself for the pain there. I wonder if I can escape the tragedies.

The irregular cacophony of life outside the house if broken when the doorbell rings.

I would give anything now if only my thoughts would clear. Images of past and present are overlapping. Duo looking up at me as I knelt down beside him on the floor of his bedroom; Quatre walking out of the bathroom toweling his baby-soft blonde hair; Relena smoothing out her skirts as she walked down the hospital corridor; my father's eyes fluttering open briefly to meet my gaze of the same cold blue.

"Heero?"

Another layer. Duo standing in the doorway, an adult now, concern brimming from his features.

"Are you okay?"

Duo closing the door behind him. Him turning back to me, his skin eerily pale in the dim light from the dark street. Him squatting on the floor before me. My hand skirting the soft flesh of his cheeks. His eyes fluttering closed as a blush captures his face.

"Why are you here?"

He looks up at me, a bit confused. "You invited me, remember?"

"Why are you still here?"

Duo looks helpless for a moment, studying the carpet beneath him intently. I should have known not to ask. I pressured him too much before I left--demanding that he not stay in Siddonsburg; pleading with him to join me in New York; refusing to let him out of our last embrace.

Now he kneels before me, frustrated and helpless.

I don't want to be angry anymore, but watching him combat his own emotions I can't help it. It wells up inside me until my hands are fists at my side.

Does that man have something that I don't? Is there some flaw that I possess that he was not born of? Why was it him, the raven hair and cold indifference, and not me? I'm selfish for feeling this way but I don't care. All I want anymore is honesty. I want to grab Duo by the arms and shake him until he knows that this place is killing him. I want to convince him that I am better than that other man. I want to press him against me until there is nothing but a welding of flesh.

"Heero, I can't leave. I couldn't then and I can't now."

"Why? What's keeping you here? Your job? Your mother? What?"

He closes his eyes again before leaning forward, folding his arms across my lap and resting his head against them. "No." He gives a fraction of a shake of the head. "My work is pointless and mom--" He hesitates. "She died a few years after you left."

This hurts. I didn't mind it when my own father died--I didn't love him. But, for all her flaws, Duo loved his mother. It had been one of the reasons behind his staying when I begged him to go with me. And she was dead. A few years after I left. I was his best friend and I wasn't there. Oh, God, I should have been here.

His neck is warm against my chilled hand and he starts at the contact but does not try to break it. He shifts against me slightly, drawing his body closer against my legs and the bed.

"I'm sorry."

He shakes his head again, this time more vehemently. "Don't be. There was nothing you could have done."

"When did you meet him?" I immediately hate myself for asking it. I guess the masochistic part of me is hoping to hear that the man was there at his mother's death bed and they fell in love. Some part of me wants to know that he loves him and is loved in return. I couldn't stand it if that wasn't the case. I would feel obligated to whisk him away.

"Who? Wufei?"

"The guy at the funeral." Whether I mean my father's of his mother's I don't know. It feels suddenly, selfishly, as if he was my replacement.

"Wufei," he says. 

There's something about the way his name fall off of Duo's lips that I don't like. I was stupid to think that I could be happy for him. In a moment I am burning with jealousy.

"I just kinda ran into him."

"How long have you two been together?"

Duo shakes his head. "Heero, why are you doing this? I don't understand. You just appear out of no where and..." He sat back on his haunches. "I know why you're here, it just seems like... God, what's so important about Wufei? Why the hell do you care so much?"

"Because you were my friend. I worried about you."

He sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. In the dim light of the bedroom he looked for a minute as if in meditation. But I could easily imagine a death-pallor across his soft flesh instead of the glow of the rosy bed-side table.

"I'm sorry about your father, Heero, but... I just don't understand. Why do you want to drudge up the past like this?"

I could have sat for years and not had an answer for him. Because I was selfish? Because I was tired? Because I was desperate? Because I was miserable?

"I don't know."

He nodded a bit. "Well," he nibbled the inside of his bottom lip. "I guess, there's really nothing to say, is there?"

Infinitely sad that it was true. Duo didn't take the weight from my shoulders, he added to it. He climbed to his feet, pushed back my bangs, and walked away.

~Owari~


End file.
